Rosette Nebula - 2021/01/14

[JimFox]

I went out to Joshua Tree National Park in an area that is Bortle 3 to capture this. The Rosette is one I have captured before, but it never gets old. It's easy for me to get too picky when processing this when comparing this to all of the great Astro we have posted here. But for an unmodified camera, I think it's the best I can do.

The stars were a bit of a struggle this time. It's funny, sometimes the stars can get reduced or removed with relative ease, and then other times they fight me tooth and nail and leave all sorts of artifacts upon removal. So this has some star reduction on it, but I left more in there then I might normally do as I felt the image was starting to fall apart with more removing. Maybe it looks more realistic with more stars in the background?

I have a new laptop I am processing this on, and Starnet++ didn't install right or something as it didn't seem to work right. So I was using the Astrotools Action set in Photoshop to reduce the stars.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

SkyGuider Pro
Nikon D850 - unmodified
Tamron 150-600mm @ 500mm
50 Lights @ ISO 3200, 60 secs, f6.3
13 Darks
Processed in DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop 2021

 

[Graeme F]

That's a lovely image I would like to replicate! I love all the different colours of stars you have captured. Too often they always come out white. The nebula looks really cool too!

 

[Ben Egbert]

Looks good to my eyes Jim.

 

[AlanLichty]

I like the result.

It's hard to compare what you get from an unmodified DSLR with what we are seeing from the dedicated astro rigs in posts here.

 

[chuckp]

I think maybe lowing the ISO to 1600 would have better results I think the stars won't be as blown out and you can reduce them better.. When I used my dslr I used 800 ISO. Being in a dark sky like that you should be able to do that.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Interesting result - much different than your other astro images. I

 

[JimFox]

That's a lovely image I would like to replicate! I love all the different colours of stars you have captured. Too often they always come out white. The nebula looks really cool too!

Thanks so much Graeme, it can be a trick sometimes to keep the stars from blowing out and turning all white. Usually at this point it's just a matter of luck whether they do or don't.

 

[JimFox]

I like the result.

It's hard to compare what you get from an unmodified DSLR with what we are seeing from the dedicated astro rigs in posts here.

Thanks Alan!

And I totally get you... I have to look at my photos with one eye closed so that I can just appreciate what I did capture.

 

[JimFox]

I think maybe lowing the ISO to 1600 would have better results I think the stars won't be as blown out and you can reduce them better.. When I used my dslr I used 800 ISO. Being in a dark sky like that you should be able to do that.

Thank you Chuck. Yeah, not sure why it was up that high, I would have preferred ISO 1600 or less. I have come to base my ISO on my histogram. So I get the longest shutter speed I feel comfortable with, on this night it was 60 seconds, and then I hone in my ISO based on where my histogram is at. I have found for me, that if I go too far to the left with it, that I then have a really hard time stretching the nebula colors out. But yeah, I should have shot it at ISO 1600 it seems.

Maybe in PixInsight more detail can be pulled and stretched from Nebula's then purely trying to do it with curves in Photoshop?

 

[Alisa]

wow very nice Jim!

 

[Mike Lewis]

A nice result, lovely colors, including the stars. For whatever reason, I find using starnet to be more of a struggle on RGB images than on narrowband, and I am convinced it does not work as effectively on color images as it does on monochrome, so since you are using a OSC camera that does not help.

ML

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I went out to Joshua Tree National Park in an area that is Bortle 3 to capture this. The Rosette is one I have captured before, but it never gets old. It's easy for me to get too picky when processing this when comparing this to all of the great Astro we have posted here. But for an unmodified camera, I think it's the best I can do.

The stars were a bit of a struggle this time. It's funny, sometimes the stars can get reduced or removed with relative ease, and then other times they fight me tooth and nail and leave all sorts of artifacts upon removal. So this has some star reduction on it, but I left more in there then I might normally do as I felt the image was starting to fall apart with more removing. Maybe it looks more realistic with more stars in the background?

I have a new laptop I am processing this on, and Starnet++ didn't install right or something as it didn't seem to work right. So I was using the Astrotools Action set in Photoshop to reduce the stars.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

SkyGuider Pro
Nikon D850 - unmodified
Tamron 150-600mm @ 500mm
50 Lights @ ISO 3200, 60 secs, f6.3
13 Darks
Processed in DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop 2021

View attachment 37027
You are really getting good at this, Jim.

 

[Yervant]

I went out to Joshua Tree National Park in an area that is Bortle 3 to capture this. The Rosette is one I have captured before, but it never gets old. It's easy for me to get too picky when processing this when comparing this to all of the great Astro we have posted here. But for an unmodified camera, I think it's the best I can do.

The stars were a bit of a struggle this time. It's funny, sometimes the stars can get reduced or removed with relative ease, and then other times they fight me tooth and nail and leave all sorts of artifacts upon removal. So this has some star reduction on it, but I left more in there then I might normally do as I felt the image was starting to fall apart with more removing. Maybe it looks more realistic with more stars in the background?

I have a new laptop I am processing this on, and Starnet++ didn't install right or something as it didn't seem to work right. So I was using the Astrotools Action set in Photoshop to reduce the stars.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

SkyGuider Pro
Nikon D850 - unmodified
Tamron 150-600mm @ 500mm
50 Lights @ ISO 3200, 60 secs, f6.3
13 Darks
Processed in DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop 2021

View attachment 37027

Nice shot! This will probably be my target next time out.

 

[JimFox]

A nice result, lovely colors, including the stars. For whatever reason, I find using starnet to be more of a struggle on RGB images than on narrowband, and I am convinced it does not work as effectively on color images as it does on monochrome, so since you are using a OSC camera that does not help.

ML

Maybe that's it with Starnet++, it's an RGB issue.

Thanks Mike.